This paper proposes the design and application of an immersive virtual reality system to improve and train the emotional skills of students with autism spectrum disorders. It has been designed for ...primary school students between the ages of 7–12 and all participants have a confirmed diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. The immersive environment allows the student to train and develop different social situations in a structured, visual and continuous manner. The use of a computer vision system to automatically determine the child's emotional state is proposed. This system has been created with two goals in mind, the first to update the social situations, with the student's emotional mood taken into account, and the second to confirm, automatically, if the child's behavior is appropriate in the represented social situation. The results described in this paper show a significant improvement in the children's emotional competences, in comparison with the results obtained until now using earlier virtual reality systems.
•Virtual reality to improve the emotional skills of ASD students.•Immersive virtual reality system to create social situations where the students can practice their emotional responses.•Design and implementation of protocols to evaluate the students' emotional response.•Identify, develop and train appropriate emotional behaviors of ASD students.•Immersive virtual reality system to create social situations to improve their emotional skills.
Teachers are often called upon to identify students at behavioral and emotional risk by completing a variety of assessment tools. However, many teachers may lack the requisite skills to reliably ...identify students at risk or use data derived from assessment tools to inform intervention. A series of trainings was developed to improve decision making on the Intervention Selection Profile-Social Skills, with a focus on improving accuracy and use of data. Specifically, a two-study randomized controlled design was employed to evaluate the efficacy of a basic informational training and a training with a practice component with regards to a control condition on the collection and use of social-emotional assessment data on the ISP-SS. Results suggest limited influence of training on the accuracy of data collection, yet significant influence on improving how data are used to inform intervention. Implications for practice and research, as well as limitations, are discussed.
•Adolescents are significant informants on teaching social-emotional skills.•Low-achieving adolescent students perceived daily school life interactions as manageable.•Strategies for managing school ...life interactions reflect skills often targeted in SEL programs.•Severe interaction problems challenged students’ problem-solving strategies.•Implementing SEL program requires noticing students’ perceptions of their interactions.
Social and Emotional Learning programs, designed to enhance adolescents’ social and emotional skills, are implemented in schools worldwide. One of these programs is Skills4Life (S4L), for students in Dutch secondary education. To strengthen this program and adapt it to students’ needs, we conducted an exploratory study on their perspectives on their own social-emotional development, focusing on low-achieving students in prevocational education.
We interviewed eleven boys and eleven girls in five focus groups on (1) their general school life experiences, (2) their perceptions and experiences regarding interactions with peers, the problems they encountered in these interactions, and (3) the strategies and skills they used to solve these problems. Driven by findings in related studies initial thematic analyzes were extended using a three-step approach: an inductive, data-driven process of open coding; axial coding; and selective coding, using the social-emotional skills comprised in an often-used SEL framework as sensitizing concepts.
Overall, students were satisfied with their relationships with classmates and teachers and their ability to manage their daily interaction struggles. Their reflections on their interactions indicate that the skills they preferred to use mirror the social-emotional skills taught in many school programs. However, they also indicated that they did not apply these skills in situations they experienced as unsafe and uncontrollable, e.g., bullying and harassment. The insights into adolescents’ social-emotional skills perceptions and the problems they encountered with peers at school presented here can contribute to customizing school-based skills enhancement programs to their needs. Teacher training is required to help teachers gain insight into students’ perspectives and to use this insight to implement SEL programs tailored to their needs.
Childhood is an important stage for socio-emotional development. Understanding the associations of lifestyle habits with the healthy development of social and emotional skills is crucial for better ...interventions early in life. This study aims to analyze the association between sleep and socio-emotional development in toddlers aged 12 to 36 months and examine whether weight mediated these associations.
This study is part of a cluster randomized controlled trial developed in Portuguese childcare centers. A sample of 344 children (176 females) enrolled in the study. Participants' anthropometrics were measured while at childcare centers using standardized procedures. Body mass index (BMI) was computed as the body weight/height2 (kg/m2) ratio. Sleep quality was collected with the Tayside Children's Sleep Questionnaire, a 10-item scale that evaluates the child's ability to initiate and maintain sleep. Two additional questions regarding sleep duration were added. Parental questionnaires assessed the child's sex and date of birth, socioeconomic status, and total energy intake (TEI). Motor (fine and gross) was assessed using Bayley-III scales and socio-emotional (SE) by the Greenspan Social-Emotional Growth Chart questionnaire. Linear regression models were used to examine the associations between sleep (duration and quality) and SE with adjustments for sex, age, BMI, mothers' education, motor development, and TEI. Mediation analysis was conducted using path analysis.
SE development was significantly associated with nighttime sleep duration even when adjusted for confounders (β = 0.223; 95% CI: 0.001, 0.004 and β = 0.168; 0.0003, 0.003; respectively). Sleep quality was not significantly associated with SE development, and the weight did not explain the associations between sleep and SE development.
This study supports that sleep duration is directly associated with SE development in toddlers. From a public health perspective, sleep duration should be prioritized in intervention programs to improve socio-emotional development early in life.
There are well-established benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs for children within educational contexts. Combining social–emotional skills and compassion abilities has been ...seldomly done, and it may be valuable at individual and societal levels, for resilient, empathetic, and inclusive societies. This study explored the feasibility and efficacy of a program designed to promote socioemotional and compassion skills in children attending the 3rd and 4th grades, by using in-class dynamics complemented with serious games. This program, named “The Me and the Us of Emotions,” is part of the Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies 2020 and consists of 10 group sessions embedded in the school curriculum. Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial design, school classes were allocated to intervention (classes,
n
= 8; children,
n
= 163) and control groups (classes,
n
= 6; children,
n
= 132). During the program, facilitators assessed adherence to the sessions’ plan, attendance, dosage (i.e., how many sessions were delivered), and participant responsiveness. Children completed self-report measures of social–emotional skills and emotional climate at pre-, post-intervention, 3-month, and 6-month follow-ups. Results indicate that the program is feasible, with high adherence, high attendance rate, and participant responsiveness. Results also indicate empathy, soothing, and drive feelings to change from pre-intervention to all other assessment moments, for the intervention group only. Moreover, cooperation and threat changed over time for participants in both the control and the intervention groups. The current study offers empirical support for the feasibility and utility of a compassion-based social–emotional learning program on promoting children’s empathy, and emotions of soothing and vitality in the school context. Thus, these findings contribute to recent research on the potential added value of compassion practices within an SEL program.
The development and promotion of social-emotional skills in childhood and adolescence contributes to subsequent well-being and positive life outcomes. However, the assessment of these skills is ...associated with conceptual and methodological challenges. This review discusses how social-emotional skill measurement in youth could be improved in terms of skills' conceptualization and classification, and in terms of assessment techniques and methodologies. The first part of the review discusses various conceptualizations of social-emotional skills, demonstrates their overlap with related constructs such as emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality dimensions, and proposes an integrative set of social-emotional skill domains that has been developed recently. Next, methodological approaches that are innovative and may improve social-emotional assessments are presented, illustrated by concrete examples. We discuss how these innovations could advance social-emotional assessments, and demonstrate links to similar issues in related fields. We conclude the review by providing several concrete assessment recommendations that follow from this discussion.
Public Significance Statement
This review discusses how the conceptualization and assessment of social-emotional skills could be advanced to improve child and youth well-being. After presenting various social-emotional frameworks and reviewing methodological approaches that may improve or innovate social-emotional assessments, five concrete recommendations that may guide further research and practice are provided.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
While character strengths have been found to predict educational outcomes beyond broad personality traits and cognitive ability, little is known about their differential contribution to success and ...positive learning experiences in different school settings. In this study, we use trait activation theory to investigate the relationships of students’ character strengths with achievement, flow experiences, and enjoyment in different learning situations (i.e., teacher-centered learning, individual tasks, and group work). In studying these relationships, we controlled for psychometric intelligence. Secondary school students (
N
= 255; 46.3% male; mean age = 14.5 years) completed a self-report measure of character strengths, the VIA-Youth (
Park and Peterson, 2006b
). Cognitive ability was assessed using a standardized intelligence test (PSB-R;
Horn et al., 2003
) at baseline. Three months later, students completed the Flow Short Scale (
Rheinberg et al., 2003
) adapted to the three learning situations and indicated their typical enjoyment of these situations. Both the students and their teachers (
N
= 18; 50% male; mean age = 44.8 years) provided ratings on school achievement in each of the three learning situations. Results indicate that, as expected, (a) certain character strengths (love of learning and perseverance) show consistent relationships with achievement and positive learning experiences (flow and enjoyment) above and beyond cognitive ability across all learning situations, whereas (b) other character strengths show differential trait-outcome relationships (e.g., the character strength of teamwork was predictive of achievement and positive learning experiences in group work). Taken together, these results suggest that different character strengths play a role in different school situations and that their contribution to explaining variance in educational outcomes is incremental to the contribution of cognitive ability.
The present study was a cross-sectional and applied research comparing the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation and social emotional skills on the development of theory of mind in autistic ...children. The quasi-experimental method was pre-test and post-test with control group. From 45 students introduced to a school and MITA in (2019-2020) by completing a questionnaire of ASSQ in a community of 30 people in the sample group of 30 people was replaced by stratified random sampling in two training groups and one control group. The first group was trained with intelligent facial cognitive rehabilitation program and the second group was trained with emotional and social skills. The third group did not receive training. Statistical results of MANCOVA and Scheffe post hoc test showed that the level of mind theory in children with autism increased after applying only cognitive rehabilitation and both groups had higher mean levels of total mind theory than the control group. Experimental groups 1 had higher mean than level 1 and 2 and total mind theory than the control group and the difference between the means was significant at the level of 0.05. The second experimental group had a higher mean at level 3 than the control group and the difference in means was significant at the level of 0.05. It can be concluded that cognitive rehabilitation is a suitable intervention method for educators and therapists of autistic children to promote the theory of mind.
The acquisition of social and emotional skills is associated with positive youth development, character education, healthy lifestyle behaviours, reduction in depression and anxiety, conduct ...disorders, violence, bullying, conflict, and anger. School-based interventions aimed to enhance these skills go beyond a problem-focused approach to embrace a more positive view of health; they could also improve the youth's wellbeing.
To describe the main features and to establish the effectiveness of universal school-based RCTs for children and the youth, aimed to promote their psychosocial wellbeing, positive development, healthy lifestyle behaviours and/or academic performance by improving their emotional and social skills.
Systematic review by searching for relevant papers in PubMed/Medline with the following key words: "mental health" OR "wellbeing" OR "health promotion" OR "emotional learning" OR "social learning" OR "emotional and social learning" OR "positive youth development" OR "life skills" OR "life skills training" AND "school". Interval was set from January 2000 to April 2014.
1,984 papers were identified through the search. Out of them 22 RCTs were included. While most interventions were characterized by a whole-school approach and SAFE practices, few studies only used standardized measures to assess outcomes, or had collected follow-up data after ≥ 6 months. The results of all these trials were examined and discussed.
Universal school-based RCTs to enhance emotional and social skills showed controversial findings, due to some methodological issues mainly. Nevertheless they show promising outcomes that are relatively far-reaching for children and youth wellbeing and therefore are important in the real world.
This study examined latent profiles of school burnout symptoms, studyholism, and engagement among high-school students. The dimensions of school burnout (e.g., exhaustion, cynicism, feelings of ...inadequacy), studyholism, and overall school engagement were examined as indicators of the latent profiles. The OECD socio-emotional skills framework (curiosity, grit, social engagement, belongingness, and academic buoyancy) was examined in predicting students' belonging to different latent groups. The participants were 1038 high-school students from the Helsinki metropolitan area who completed an online survey concerning their experiences of school-related burnout, engagement, studyholism, and key socio-emotional skills. The results from the latent profile analyses showed that three homogeneous groups of students could be identified according to students' experiences of burnout, studyholism, and engagement, namely engaged (34%), stressed (47%), and burned out (19%) groups. The results showed that in the context of socio-emotional skills, those who reported high curiosity, grit, academic buoyancy, social engagement, and belongingness were more likely to belong to the engaged rather than the stressed or burned out groups, and to the stressed rather than the burned out group.
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